Falling to Pieces
by altered phoenix light
Summary: They were holding each other together. Now that she's leaving, they're losing what little they had. GSR, one-shot, their thoughts. Disclaimer--I don't own CSI.


This is just a little something I wrote up over the weekend while I wasn't looking for a job. Well, at least I have a job now, and I'll try to keep writing when I'm not cutting pizzas for a living. I hope you enjoy this! It's basically Grissom/Sara's thoughts about one another right when she leaves.

* * *

Falling to Pieces

He didn't want to believe what his ears were telling him. The cell phone in his hands read "call ended" but he wished that it could have lasted forever. He knew he had lost her finally, but it had been amazing while it lasted. He could never previously have fathomed a day in which she would leave him.

"Sara…I'm not strong enough," he whispered into the darkness. He knew his life would disintegrate without her there. There was nothing else for him. She was the one who held him together.

They had been two lonely hearts, searching for love they had never realized they had missed. When they had found one another, he wanted to shout from the rooftops that he was in love with the most wonderful woman in the world. However, it had been virtually prohibited by lab policy. He was Romeo secretly working with his Juliet. He took pleasure in living a sort-of double life, even if it was for a few brief moments.

She had been his strength. To the rest of the world, especially the lab, he was the face of strength. She had been the one to find his weaknesses—and love him despite them. She kept him strong so that he could face the world. He would never forget that he let her into his heart. Now, it had been shattered, as if she were a child who had dropped a china plate to the floor.

He always thought 'heartbroken' was a fanciful term, that it was a bad description for a physiological reaction to being emotionally hurt. Now, he completely felt the word. He knew that it was not a lie. It did exist, and it hurt worse than he ever could have envisioned.

He forced himself to concentrate again. He had to focus on his work. But how could he? How could he possibly focus on anything but her? Where was she, what was she doing—did she miss him at all? He thought he would go crazy just thinking about it.

A migraine was coming on; he could feel the dull throbbing just above his temples. He had taken his medicine earlier, but he couldn't understand why it was happening at the present, other than stress.

But far worse than the pain in his head was the pain in his heart, which he knew he couldn't heal.

* * *

She thought she was doing the right thing by leaving. Then why did it hurt so much to get away from all of it—especially him? She knew that she physically could not stay with him at the moment if she wanted to be all that she should be. However, the pain of parting, that "sweet sorrow" so idolized by the two most famous lovers of all time, was so enormous she felt as though she was going to die from it.

"Gil…I can't leave you," she whispered to the emptiness outside the plane. The frozen window felt good against her burning cheek. She was so ashamed of her choice. The tears of guilt came pouring down her face.

She felt so terrible for leaving, but she could see no other choices. The thread that was her lifeline to reality had been slowly unfurling itself for some time now, and she felt as though she was dangling above a precipice; there was no one to catch her if she finally fell to the floor, and no one to pull her back from it. There was no helping hand for her…save his.

She was breaking her own heart as much as she was breaking his…probably more so. Once she realized that she was not strong enough to stay, she also felt that she was too fragile to keep going. She still needed him to hold her, to love her, to tell her that naught was wrong and all was right.

The mist from her breath condensed on the window. She felt as though her heart was snapping in two, slipping away from her, breaking apart, falling to earth like plasticized snowflakes in her Disneyland snow globe.

And her last thought before she drifted into the oblivion of sleep was that she was running away from the only one who could pick up the pieces and put them back together once more.


End file.
